Microsoft has announced a new wave of Copilot Plus PCs with thin and light design and top-notch AI smarts in fresh bid to take on Apple’s Mac computers. Like the new-age Mac with Apple M-series silicon, Microsoft’s new Copilot Plus PCs run ARM-based mobile processors, more precisely Qualcomm’s freshly minted Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus platforms. Microsoft’s previous attempts at launching ARM-based computers were held back by limited app support and in many cases, poor battery life. With the new Copilot Plus PCs, it is promising to fix both these long-standing issues. Plus, it’s investing heavily on bringing “on-device” AI for quick response and better privacy.
Anyhow, Microsoft claims its new Copilot Plus PCs are up to 20 times more powerful and 100 times more efficient at running AI workloads. It’s being rather specific while making performance comparisons saying they “outperform” Apple’s MacBook Air 15 (M3) by up to 58 percent in sustained multithreaded performance, all while providing all-day battery life. Copilot+ PCs can deliver up to 22 hours of local video playback or 15 hours of web browsing on a single charge, Microsoft says, which is 20 percent more battery life for local video playback than the MacBook Air 15.
Microsoft Copilot Plus PCs — Everything to know
It’s complimenting all that power and efficiency gains with “more native Arm64 experiences than ever before,” including the fastest implementation of Microsoft 365 apps like Teams, PowerPoint, Outlook, Word, Excel, OneDrive, and OneNote. Popular applications such as Chrome, Spotify, Zoom, WhatsApp, Blender, Affinity Suite, and DaVinci Resolve now run natively on Arm while apps like Slack are set to release later this year. In a big win, Microsoft has also successfully courted Adobe to make its flagship apps including Photoshop, Lightroom, and Express, fully compatible with Copilot Plus PCs on day one while Illustrator, Premiere Pro, and more will follow this summer. It also has its own version of Apple’s Rosetta 2 called Prism to ensure that all apps run smoothly, whether they are native or emulated.
AI being the hot buzzword, Microsoft is specifically going for on-device AI that works in tandem with the on-board NPU and its small language models (SLMs) to facilitate a wide range of conveniences.
With a new feature called “Recall,” users can access virtually everything they’ve seen or done on their PC in a way that feels like “having photographic memory.” Copilot Plus PCs organise information based on relationships and associations unique to each user’s experiences, helping them remember and find what they’re looking for quickly and intuitively using the cues they remember. Microsoft says Recall leverages a personal semantic index, built and stored entirely on the device. Snapshots remain local to the PC and can be managed by the user. Individual snapshots can be deleted, and time ranges can be adjusted or deleted in Settings. Users can pause Recall at any point from the System Tray icon on the Taskbar and filter apps and websites from being saved.
Follow FE Tech Bytes on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook.
In Paint and Photos, users can combine ink strokes with text prompts to generate new images in real time with “Cocreator.” Photo editing and image creation are meanwhile taken to the next level with Restyle Image, allowing users to reimagine personal photos with new styles by combining image generation and photo editing in Photos. Users can choose pre-set styles like Cyberpunk or Claymation to transform the background, foreground, or entire picture, creating entirely new images.
Live Captions now includes live translations, turning any audio on the PC into a single English-language caption experience in real-time across all apps. This feature supports translation from over 40 languages into English subtitles instantly, even offline.
In the coming weeks, users will gain access to the latest models, including GPT-4o from OpenAI, Microsoft has confirmed.
Copilot Plus PCs will be available starting June 18 from a range of Microsoft’s OEM partners including Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, with prices starting at USD 999. Microsoft is itself launching a new Surface Laptop (13.8- and 15-inch) and Surface Pro 2-in-1, a follow-up to the Intel-based versions which were launched recently for business customers.